Hello Allen,
Good to see you back and doing well. Curious to hear your take on the
MobilePro saga. On or off list is good with me.
The Friends
Quite a few people have asked me (A) what have I
been doing lately? And (B) please tell me the
MobilePro saga. It means a lot to me that some
of you have asked about me. It has hit me that
although only have a handful of friends here in
town, I did have 100+ friends in this
industry! Thank you all for your kind thoughts
and I do apologize for dropping off the planet
like I did. That was my loss more than anyone
else's. You are some of the finest people I have
ever met in my life, besides my old ShreveNet
staff. You know how I felt about my crew. Heck,
you all helped me train them! ;)
The Saga
I will start with the MobilePro Saga and get it
out of the way and move on to more positive
things like the goodthings I have been up to in
the past year or two. I tell you The Saga not
as an excuse for my hiatus from the wireless
industry, and excuse for my strange behavior, but
well
.(get it? Well, thats a deep subject,
LOL) well
..because some of you asked me too
(cough cough Brad Belton cough cough).
Here goes......
It is somewhat of an interesting story I guess,
for inside industry people like us, or else this
might be extremely Off Topic for this list. As a
WISP, this is not as easy story for me to
tell. Not a happy story for me. I would like to
tell the story and forget as much as possible and
move on. Perhaps there is something that you can
learn from this (yeah like Allen is not so smart
after all? (Maybe and maybe not, you decide)
The Disclaimer
It has been over 3 years since the sale of my
(W)ISP to MobilePro. I am no longer under any
agreement or obligation. I am now entitled to
express my opinion right or wrong. This is my opinion and only my opinion.
The Beginning
Roll the clock back to 2004. Life is pretty
good. Speaking at WISPCON. Drinking Romulan Ale
with some of the finest people on the
planet. (now argue that point) Why on earth
would I want to sell my company? The WISP of my
dreams? Whatsup wit dat? There were a whole
host of reasons for selling out and many of which
were personal some were reasonable, and some
might have been downright psychotic. Here are
some of the reasons I had for selling, just in
case any of you ever consider selling
yourself. That might be one of the most
difficult decisions you ever make. Choose wisely!
(A) I was not a pureplay. We offered wireless,
DSL, dialup, T1, hosting, web design, hotspots,
you name it, I tried it all. My problems began
as I began to take a beating on dialup amid new
competition with cablemodem and several DSL
carriers. I was bleeding revenues about 1% of
month despite growth in broadband areas (DSL,
wireless and T1) But I was all over the Northern
state. Not much DSL and T1 out there in the
boonies. And wireless was relatively a new trick
for everyone back in those days.
I was debt free until 1999 when I acquired the
second largest ISP in the area (I was the
largest). With this new debt, I borrowed even
more to host all these new customers. (The old
ISP was using crap) I got a good interest rate
with the bank and with my father, both who backed
me. LOL, then we REALLY started growing fast!
(mainly dialup) So much of this debt was the
result of left over baggage from the dial days
plus the acquisition days and subsequent growth days.
I began looking into my crystal ball and began to
worry seeing an ever changing future in
broadband. (especially wireless) Would I ever get
this debt paid off in time before I must prepare
for the next round of change? Then bang, my
father came down with melanoma cancer in his
lungs. This was right after Matt Larsens Dad
died. My Dad already had prostate cancer and
basil cell carcinoma. (3 types total) at this
time (04) My doctor told me he probably wouldnt
see his next birthday. He was 84 at the time. I
wanted to pay off my Dad before he passed
away. That was a major factor. It was important
to me that he be proud of his remaining only son.
The First Lesson
All Doctors arent always right. My father found
some new doctors with new ideas and had 3 very
targeted lung surgeries (1 per year) and is doing
remarkably well now for an 87 year old man. I am
very proud of him. He is one tough old bird
and just like the energizer bunny, he keeps going
and going and going. He still drives to his
office every day for a few hours every day. Im
on the 5th floor and he is on the 11th floor,
still at 333 Texas all these many years. (He longer than I)
Also a part of this lesson is to use various
domain names for unique services. That way you
can sell part and not all of a property. (as needed)
More Reasons
Around that time I suddenly had a bad back. I
didnt know what was wrong with my back. Looking
back, I am convinced it was hauling all those
cinder blocks and sakcrete bags up ladders on my
shoulders along with my crew. While at the
doctors, they said I had a bad test (you dont
want TMI) and further testing showed a kidney
stone. Long story short is -- I may have had one
and passed it, but outpatient surgery yielded no
stone. Stone free, my back was still bad and got
me really down. To this day I dont think I ever
even had a kidney stone. Anyway, I increased my
evening dose of Romulan Ale which does help by the way :)
The Second Lesson
Take care out there on the jobsite. Both you and
your crew. Ever see one of those kidney belts
strapped around employees at Home Depot? No job
is worth life or injury. I bought a new
tempurpedic mattress and my back is MUCH better
nowadays. Maybe 90% perfect now. Watch those
ballast mount jobs. They are killer.
Continue the Saga and Get on With It PLEASE!
So I succumbed under all the pressure of all
this, plus the normal pressures of raising a
family yada yada, and I signed on with a new dot
com broker. He hooked me up with MobilePro and
the negotiations began with its new CEO and
Chairman of the Board (Not a good combination) A
CEO should never be the Chairman of the Board at
the same time, which is not illegal but at the
same time , it is somewhat shady in my amateur
stockbroker option. For example, if a
disgruntled shareholder wants to go past the CEO
and email the Board directly, well guess
what? The CEO is the Chairman of the Board! So
he decides if the letter should be passed on to
the Board or not. But I digress
.
I was looking for a new investor to replace my
Dad. I asked the buyer questions such as
this. Are you going to keep my staff, or lay
them all off? (You know how I felt about my
staff) The answers I got were like this. Of
course we want your staff. Why else would be buy
the company if we didn't want the people who
built it. Next question, Are you going to put
us into retention mode, or invest in
wireless? Answer; Invest in wireless. We are
a wireless company. We have $100MM and you will
be The Wireless Director for the entire nation.
Good Answers! SOLD! I received half cash and
half MOBL shares after all my debts were
paid. By law I had to hold those shares for 12
months (Rule 144 of the Tax Act of 1933)
The MobilePro Story
MobilePro purchases about 10 or 11 ISPs
total. I was #4. Then they purchased the
nations largest independent phone booth company
(Davel), and after that, a couple of CLECs (AFN
and CloseCall). Why phone booths I
pondered? Answer; to build WIFI hotspots out of
them. Well that turned out to be a total joke,
and I never could convince anyone at MOBL to
build out even 10 or 12 (out of 40,000 booths) as
a test project. I had significant Subscriber
Gateway experience at that point building
hotspots using Routerboards if you recall. That
was all part of the "pump and dump" IMHO.
Meanwhile, the ISPs were going through a train
wreck integration plan masterminded by the
clueless head of the ISP division. Our customers
started to complain big time. Now my job shifted
to damage control as the local flavor of these
ISPs was dismantled and centralized out of
state. Email service was deteriorating (even mail
spools being lost) and it became clear the
company was not going to invest a penny in any of
the ISPs but rather bleed them to pay new
expenses (salaries at top levels for
example). There was much piercing of the "corporate veil".
I experienced some low points. For instance, I
employed a quadriplegic who was one of my best
call center (tech support) employees. He could
move one arm enough to operate a mouse. He was as
high school football star injured during a
game. He was a favorite with our customer base
and was in the newspaper and got more positive
feedback than just about all other employees
combined. I received the order to terminate him
as they were running adds in Arizona for their
new centralized call center at, get this, more
money than I paid this person with over 7 years experience! Go figure....
The Ditch
One day I spoke with my lawyer whose firm was a
long time customer of mine in the same building
(333 Texas St), and he asked me why MP was
running things off into a ditch! I said, Heck, I
dunno, why dont you call their lawyer and ask
them? As an investor I was concerned with what I
was seeing on a daily basis, and nobody seemed to
even care. Go for it. So my attorney called
MPs on-staff attorney, and asked him flat out if
they realized that "management was running the
ISPs off into a ditch". LOL, they never even
responded to us. I had almost a million shares
mind you
At the same time, the CEO is
responding to emails from tiny shareholders with
many fewer share but who were active on the
boards such as Ragingbull.com. Pumpers they are
called. It was a classic pump and dump scheme IMHO.
I was halfway into my 2 year contract where I
could legally sell my shares. I was on the edge
of my seat counting the days. I actually had to
threaten MOBL with eviction if they didnt get me
personally off their lease after almost 1 whole
year of procrastination. No joke. It was a
chaotic mess. After several threats, I got my
stock certificates unregistered, and was
threatened with a lawsuit if I didnt quit immediately. So I quit
.
The Good News.
I sold my MOBL shares. Dumped them ASAP. We all
did. All my employee/partners and I dumped MOBL
like a hot potato while the gettin was good. I
sold between $0.34 and $0.30. To put things in
perspective, a couple of years later, today,
right now, MOBL is at $0.0008. Did I do the right thing?
I did the right thing obviously. I was right and
all of MOBL management was wrong. I outsmarted a
Wall Street, a New England, Georgetown lawyer,
Merrill Lynch guru, not by intelligence, but by
pure dumb luck. A good ole boy from
Louisiana. Heheheheheheh, I sold on a strong
gut feeling because I knew things were not right
in my heart. It was obvious and very
frustrating. So I sold out
..Again only 12
months later after selling my WISP.. This was
very hard for me. You all know me.
The Bad News
I am out of a job and a career and on the
street. I havent had a paycheck in the longest
time. I used my profits to live off of and start
a new business, and a new chapter in my
life. One that is behind a desk, much like I did
in the 80s. One that is back friendly with
lots of hope and promise (like the good ole days) like a desk job.
Ah, but there is more to the Saga
Why wasnt I still the wireless director when I
was forced to quit? Because of a man named Bruce
Sanguinetti, a former founder of
Breezecom. Perhaps Patrick knows him. Bruce
came on board and quickly knifed me and took over
my position. Fixed wireless?? Are you
kidding? We are NOT going to do any truck rolls! No CPE!
What?, I said? I did not realize back in 04
that the holy grail had be found! LOL So Bruce
headed the Tempe muni wifi project and MobilePro
bought Kite Networks, ironically a fixed
wireless Sprint subcontractor. Muni WIFI?? That is the holy grail?
The Old Sprint MMDS Project
Steve Stroh can correct me if Im wrong. His
memory is much better than mine. But recall the
old Sprint MMDS network in Phoenix and a few
other markets? They had about 15k or 20k users
at one time as I recall before they put a freeze
on signups back years ago. 20k isnt much by my
dial-up standards, but this was the largest fixed
wireless network in the country IIRC. Well Sprint
found someone named Jerry Sullivan at Kite
Networks (Old Tritel mogul?) to contract out the
maintenance of these licensed spectrum fixed
wireless customers owned by Sprint.
MOBL buys Kite from Jerry for something like
$20MM (I forget). (wink wink) Last month, MOBL
just sold Kite to someone called Gobility for
barely $2MM only the deal has fallen through
cause they can't get funding or
something. Whatever.. So this represents yet another major stockholder loss.
As a side note, Robert Hoskins at Broadband
Wireless Exchange was so duped. Even at this
moment he lists MobilePro as the largest WISP in
the USA by Robert. LMAO
I dont believe it, do you?
<http://www.bbwexchange.com/wireless_isp/>http://www.bbwexchange.com/wireless_isp/
MOBL owns very few true wireless
customers. Sprint owns all those MMDS
customers. Robert is smarter than that so I have
to wonder. Sprint is technically the largest
WISP in the nation measure by customers OWNED
rather than customers served as a
subcontractor. But Sprint never claimed that
honor (or got to Robert for the publicity) Sorry
Robert, Im not dissing you. Just disappointed
for the lack of due diligence or whatever. Quite
a big zit on your website if you ask me. Butr hey, what do I know.....
The Financing
MOBL primarily used Cornell Capital Partners for
their funding. Cornell has a history with
funding companies that is less than favorable for
investors. Google Cornell Capital it if you
are interested. In fact, Google Cornell plus Death Spiral... LMAO.
My Opinion
It is my opinion that MOBL represented a Toxic
Financing or otherwise Death Spiral financing
scheme perpetrated by top management. Cornell is
under investigation by the SEC. I dont know about MOBL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_spiral_financing
Google more if you care to. I dont
I've witnessed enough of this wreck.
The Result
MOBL is a subpenny stock that has fallen 95%
plus, yet the CEO is continued to be rewarded and
paid $240k per year plus incentives. He got a
bonus for every company bought or sold. His name
is Jay O. Wright. Please remember this name
incase he ever wants to buy you out.
The Conclusion
Thats about all I know to say. There is much
more detail to the story. Did you know that the
son of Bing Crosby, Nathaniel Crosby was a MOBL
pumper called Wiseinvestments? It is a sordid
tale and I should write a book, but I have kids
to feed now. I believe Wiseinvestments was
friends with Jack Beech who you know Brad... Bing
would roll over in his grave to see how
NatInvestments turned out. LOL, I wonder if
they have access to Google up in heaven.
In any event, this is the "Cliff Notes" of the
Saga which is more like a Soap Opera if you ask
me. I hope this brief overview of the story
helps someone somehow to avoid a mistake or two
(or three) that I have made in my career. My
relief is knowing that 10 other ISPs also
followed the same path. Some good Wireless folks
like Paul Sadler. I am in good company and the
fact remains that I always was...................
You might think you are smart like I did, but
with the flick of a switch, you find yourself in
a whole new wall street corporate realm that is
unlike our world. I got a taste of that world,
and now I believe in "independents" more than
ever. From the bottom of my heart I wish you all
Good Luck and to kick some serious butt and teach
those corporate [EMAIL PROTECTED]@ards the meaning of the word
"WISP". All Giants fail because of their greed
and their arrogance and their incumbencies. They
can't pay off lawyers forever. Everyone loves
the underdog. You have a job to do. So stop
reading this post Get to work and I wish I could
be there with you. I chose a new path and
hopefully it wasn't all in vain. That will be
part 2 if this post doesn't get bounced for being too long.
Allen
am at bandwise dot com
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